Updated 23 March 2022
Pioneer Health Care Limited is an independent organisation which provides secondary care dermatology consultations and dermatology minor surgical procedures in the community at Sloan Medical Centre, 2 Little London Road, Sheffield. They have a satellite clinic at Norfolk Park Medical Practice, 227 Park Grange Road, Sheffield S2 3TA. The satellite clinic was not visited as part of this inspection.
The leadership team consists of four directors, working alongside consultant dermatologists, a nurse, health care assistant and administrative staff . Patients are referred into the service by their NHS GP through a subcontract arrangement with The Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundtaion Trust. Between 1 April 2021 and 22 February 2022, the service saw 2490 new patient referrals, 3727 follow up appointments were carried out and 561 minor surgical procedures performed.
The provider is registered with CQC to provide the regulated activities, treatment of disease, disorder or injury and surgical procedures at this location to patients aged over 18 years.
The office opening hours for patient enquiries is Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm. The consultants normally hold clinics on the following days:-
Mondays 9.30am to 5pm (alternate weeks)
Tuesday 1pm to 5pm (2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month)
Thursday 1pm to 5pm
Friday 4pm to 7pm and 9am to 4pm at the satellite site.
How we inspected this service
Throughout the pandemic CQC has continued to regulate and respond to risk. However, taking into account the circumstances arising as a result of the pandemic, and in order to reduce risk, we have conducted our inspections differently.
This inspection was carried out in a way which enabled us to spend a minimum amount of time on site. This was with consent from the provider and in line with all data protection and information governance requirements.
This included:
- Conducting an interview with the registered manager using video conferencing
- Staff completing interview templates
- Requesting evidence including documents relating to the management of the service from the provider prior to the inspection
- Reviewing patient feedback received by the provider
- A short site visit
To get to the heart of patients’ experiences of care and treatment, we always ask the following five questions:
- Is it safe?
- Is it effective?
- Is it caring?
- Is it responsive to people’s needs?
- Is it well-led?
These questions therefore formed the framework for the areas we looked at during the inspection.